As the use of composites has become popular in recent years, the design of the composite joints has become a very important research area because the structural efficiency of the composite structure is determined by its joints, not by its basic structures. In this paper, presented comparisons of numerical results by the FAI(Failure area index) method[9] and measured data for a various geometric shapes and stacking sequence justify the validity of the FAI method. The FAI method is shown to produce very favorable comparisons with measured failure loads of mechanically fastened composite joints with the difference well within 9.96% for all II cases investigated.

Modeling of thick composite structures for finite element analysis is relatively complicated. 2-D plane elements may cause inaccurate result since the plane stress condition cannot be applicable in these structures. Therefore a 3-D modeling should be used. However, the difficulty to model all the layers with different material properties and ply orientation arise in this case. In this paper, an equivalent modeling is proposed and numerically tested for analysis of thick composite structures. By grouping layers with same material and ply orientation, number of elements through the thickness is remarkably reduced and still the result is close enough to the one from a detail finite element model. MSC/NASTRAN and PATRAN are used for the analysis. The proposed modeling technique has been applied for analysis of composite rotor hub system designed by Korea Aerospace Research Institute(KARI). Using the proposed equivalent modeling technique, we could conduct stress analysis for the hub system and check the safety factor of each part.

In this paper, the fracture strength of the surface damaged laminates was predicted by applying the fracture strengths of the unflawed and flawed laminates. For prediction, the theoretical equation about the fracture strength of laminates was simplified applying classical laminate theory and was applied to the surface damaged laminates. Lagace's and Tsai's experimental data were used for verifying the theoretical equation. Moreover, to verify the theoretical prediction, an experiment was performed. Surface unflawed laminate and flawed laminates were fabricated and the experiments were made and these results were compared with theoretical predictions. The specimens' fiber direction was same to the tensile direction and the theoretical predictions and the experimental results were showed good agreement. Therefore, by this equation, the fracture strength of structures made of composites will be able to be predicted when the surface of the structures was damaged.

Using the theory of linear piezoelectricity, the dynamic response of a central crack in a functionally graded piezoelectric ceramic under anti-plane shear impact is analyzed. We assume that the properties of the functionally graded piezoelectric material vary continuously along the thickness. By using the Laplace and Fourier transform, the problem is reduced to two pairs of dual integral equations and then into Fredholm integral equations of the second kind. Numerical values on the dynamic stress intensity factors are presented to show the dependence of the gradient of material properties and electric loading.

In this study, the analytical investigation of orthotropic rectangular plate is presented. The loaded edges are assumed to be simply supported and the unloaded edges could have elastically restrained boundary conditions including the extreme boundary condition such as simple, fixed, and free. Using the closed-form solutions, the buckling analyses of orthotropic plate with arbitrary boundary conditions are performed. Based on the data obtained by conducting numerical analysis, the simplified form of equation for finding the buckling coefficient of plate with elastically restrained boundary conditions at the unloaded edges is suggested as a function of aspect ratio, elastic restraint. and material properties of the plate. The results of buckling analyses by closed-form solution and simplified form of solution are compared for various orthotropic material properties. It is confirmed that the difference of results is less than 1.5%.

Embedding viscoelastic-damping materials into composites can greatly increase the damping properties of composite structures. Usually viscoelastic-damping materials behave isotropically so that their damping properties are the same in all directions. In these days, there is a desire to develop viscoelastic-damping materials that behave orthotropically so that damping properties vary with material orientation. These orthotropic damping materials can be made by embedding rows of thin wires within the viscoelastic materials. These wires add significant directional stiffness to the damping materials. where the stiffness variation with wire orientation follows classical lamination theory. In this paper, the loss factor of composite laminate was evaluated based on Ni and Adams' theory. To investigate the effect of directional damping material, the low-velociy impact response analysis was also performed. The present analysis results show that directional damping material has a great influence on vibration and damping characteristic of composite laminate.

The experimental and numerical investigations on the failure characteristics of the secondary bonded composite single-lap joints were performed. The initiations and growths of cracks were observed using CCD camera and acoustic emission sensor during the tension tests of the joint specimens. The structural behaviors of the specimens were predicted by the geometric nonlinear two-dimensional finite element analysis. The three types of observed initial cracks were included in each finite element models and the strain energy release rates of each specimen models were calculated by VCCT(Virtual Crack Closure Technique) technique. The tension tests showed that the initial cracks occurred in the 60∼90% of final failure loads and the major failure modes of the specimens were adhesive failure and the delamination between the 1st and 2nd ply of laminate. The specimens with the thicker bondline had earlier crack initiation loads but higher crack propagation resistance and eventually better loading capability. The delaminations were mostly observed in the thicker bondline specimens. The mode I values of calculated strain energy release rates were higher than the mode II values in the all specimen models considering the three types of initial cracks. The mode I and total strain energy release rates were calculated as higher values in the order of initial crack in the edge interface, comer interface and delamination between the plies of laminate.